Sharon's Vision Could Steer Policy Of His Successor

January 8, 2006|By Joel Greenberg Chicago Tribune

JERUSALEM — Nicknamed "The Bulldozer," Ariel Sharon is known in Israel for his penchant for creating facts on the ground, whether building settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip or tearing them down.

His unilateral vision for a resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians rested on a division of the West Bank that would annex the main Jewish settlement blocs to Israel and leave much of the rest of the territory to a new Palestinian state.The Palestinians rejected the concept, arguing there could be no real peace without negotiations, and that the territory could not form the basis for a viable state.

Yet Sharon's idea is supported by many Israelis, and with his exit from the political scene all but certain after a series of strokes, it could drive the policies of his successor.

Sharon maintained publicly that there would be no more unilateral withdrawals after Israel's pullout last year from the Gaza Strip, and that further territorial concessions would be made only as part of the "road map" peace plan backed by the Bush administration.

Yet Sharon was widely thought to be considering more withdrawals after the March elections, specifically the removal of outlying settlements beyond the separation barrier Israel is building in the West Bank.

After leaving the Likud party to form a new centrist faction in November, Sharon said that he intended to work in his next term to shape Israel's final borders.

Though he did not spell out what those would be, the 400-mile barrier going up in the West Bank was an indication of what he had in mind.

The barrier slices into the West Bank, and is planned to wrap around the large Israeli settlement blocs Sharon said he would keep in any future peace deal.

The three largest blocs are the town of Ariel and neighboring settlements in the northern West Bank, the settlement town of Maaleh Adumim east of Jerusalem, and the Gush Etzion bloc of settlements south of Bethlehem.

About 8 percent of the West Bank is to remain on the Israeli side of the barrier, including nearly 75 percent of the 250,000 Jewish settlers in the territory. Some 63,000 settlers would be left outside the barrier, along with most of the 2.3 million Palestinians in the West Bank.

Sharon made clear that he intended to annex the large settlement blocs.

"There is no possibility that these settlement blocs will not exist under Israel's control," he said in December. "These are areas that Israel must definitely hold on to."

Despite a stipulation in the road map plan that Israel freeze settlement activity, construction has continued in the settlement blocs, and Sharon pledged to bolster them.

Sharon drew support for his territorial vision from President Bush, who in a letter to Sharon in April 2004 endorsed Israel's retention of the settlement blocs.

"In light of the new realities on the ground," Bush wrote, "including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unlikely to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations can be a full and complete return" to Israel's boundary with the West Bank.

None of Sharon's possible successors has the commanding presence and broad public support that enabled him to push through the Gaza withdrawal and would have helped him carry out more pullouts in the West Bank. Yet two successors share a commitment to the idea.

Ehud Olmert, Sharon's deputy and the acting prime minister, has called for broad withdrawals in the West Bank, often floating ideas that went further than Sharon's public positions.

Amir Peretz, the leader of the dovish Labor party, is a strong supporter of territorial compromise, advocating a speedy return to peace negotiations with the Palestinians to reach a final agreement.

Only Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of the rightist Likud, opposes further withdrawals, and he has criticized Sharon for giving up the Gaza Strip, saying he received nothing in return.

Sharon defended his readiness to give up territory with a demographic argument, asserting that Israel could not maintain its Jewish and democratic character while ruling 4 million Palestinians.

In a prepared speech he failed to deliver in September to a meeting of the Likud party when opponents silenced his microphone, Sharon planned to say: "Not everything will remain in our hands. ... It is impossible to have a Jewish democratic state and also rule all of the Land of Israel."